Enayball

Two designers creating accessible art tools. Currently developing Enayball; an award-winning drawing tool for people with physical disabilities. www.enayball.com

23/03/2022

Today was the first day of ‘Free Your Map’ - An accessible visual arts tour exhibiting work by disabled artists' with the Enayball tool, with Draw to Perform. Supported by CASS ART & Fabrica Gallery as part of Brighton & Hove City Council's ABCD Plan for Cultural Recovery.

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Alternative Tours of Brighton & Hove celebrate the rich culture in our city, told through the voices of our community. Throughout March we invite you to join us in movement, art and performance to explore the city through a new lens.

22/03/2022

Enayball holds art tools (from 4-40mm in diameter) with an adjustable clamp. A compression spring holds the tool firmly against the paper, ensuring a consistent line. When the artist chooses, they can press the remote to raise or lower the tool. The remote connects to Enayball via Bluetooth and controls a servo and cam to create this movement.

The device has many ergonomic considerations; the remote’s button is large and sensitive and features a sprung clip, velcro strap, and magnets, so it can be attached anywhere to work around the artist's ability. The shape of Enayball mimics an ergonomic mouse, meaning that the artist's wrist is not in flexion, reducing strain, and a velcro strap supports their grip. A removable arm means it can be used both on a wheelchair and by hand. The arm uses tensioned U-Joints to lengthen or shorten, so it fits different styles of chairs, and to suit the artist’s line of sight. The V clamp fits any shape of wheelchair tubing.

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Dyson Award International Top 20: https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/en-US/2021/project/enayball/

21/03/2022

The first proof-of-concept prototype was a hacked roll-on deodorant stick. We mixed ink with deodorant...it made for delicious smelling artwork that never dried! We then moved to use a ball-bearing castor as the nib so it could dispense more media, like poster paint. We produced 10 of these prototypes for a 7 person workshop as part of a drawing festival.

Users from a workshop asked for more control and independence when drawing. This involved the ability to stop and start the line when they choose (electronics to lift the nib on/off the surface with a remote control) and to extend or shorten the arm to improve the artist’s visibility (an adjustable arm utilising U-joints). It was essential that all developments were consistently driven by real-world user-feedback We then joined a hardware accelerator program which encouraged us to reconsider the design in order to maximise social impact.

Through a series of end-user interviews, we concluded a handheld modality would open up the benefits of Enayball to wider audiences. With the assistance of several OTs and many testing sessions, we designed the shape to be an upright, ergonomic gripping device. We also focused on DFMA, making it material-efficient via 3D printing so that it can be accessibly-priced and quickly adjustable

18/03/2022

Here, Enayball is being used by Dana who has cerebral palsy and has trouble with gripping traditional media like pens and pencils. Enayball’s ergonomic mouse shape is large and easy to grasp, and combined with a velcro strap and an area to rest the hand, a pen becomes a sturdy, stable tool.

17/03/2022

The product can be attached to a wheelchair where it draws at floor level in synchronicity as the user moves their chair. It can also be used on a tabletop by hand, supporting users with limited grip strength. Both applications use electronics to remotely lift the pen off the drawing surface.

Here you can see Dana, who has cerebral palsy, using the remote control to to lift the pen on and off the paper as she draws.

The remote can be strapped to a wrist, clipped to a t shirt or attached to a wheelchair, depending on the use case.

15/03/2022

1.5million people in the UK have limiting dexterity issues which impact their ability to use art equipment (Department for work and pensions, Family Resource Survey 2011/12). Over half of these people are wheelchair users. (NHS England, Improving Wheelchair Services).

Not only is art defined as a human right by the EU, it also:

Is a key form of disability therapy, with clinical results including: improved social identity (Reynolds and Lim, 2007) and reduced depression (Ross et a, 2006)

It's also underrepresented within disability groups: 20% of the UK population are disabled, yet, only 9% in the arts are disabled themselves. (The Boar, 2020)

10/03/2022

We’re Pete and Eli, product designers, friends and co-founders of Enayball. Here’s our ugly mugs during a workshop and event covered by BBC Southeast back in 2021. In our hands is the current Enayball prototype, as seen in testing photos with Alison and other users.

25/02/2022

creating a large scale painting using

04/02/2022

Always a pleasure working with our Art Ambassador . Here she is trying out the most recent iteration of Enayball, which can be used with any art media - pens, paints, chalks - and can be raised off the paper via a Bluetooth remote control so she can start and stop the line.

31/01/2022

‘Using the Enayball for the fist time, I could fill a space. And I’ve never been able to do that before. If your in a wheelchair and you can’t move a muscle, but you can move your joystick, it opens up this whole new world’ - Alison Lapper MBE

24/01/2022

We're looking for participants for our Alternative Tours of Brighton & Hove project!

Free Your Map is led by Ram Samocha of Draw to Perform, and the creators of Enayball - a creative tool designed specifically for artists who use a wheelchair and have disabilities that constrain their movement. If you're a wheelchair user, art lover and would like to get involved email lisa@sussexdancenetwork.co.uk 💛

17/01/2022

Some snaps from our interview with the BBC before Christmas with

Pete’s looking a little serious…

Catch the piece on our last post 📺

Address

Walthamstow

Telephone

+447875357101

Website

http://www.enayball.com/

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